


Lullabies and Dragon Fire

by Attaining



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone lives, F/M, Romance, Season 8, Spoilers, after episode 8x02, bamf Sansa, rose colored glasses fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 07:23:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18586513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attaining/pseuds/Attaining
Summary: Sansa cannot sit out the battle helplessly, not when Theon might die without her at his side.aka How everyone could live through The Great Battle of Winterfell. Spoilers for 8x02.





	Lullabies and Dragon Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Writing happy ending fic to soothe my anxiety until Sunday's 8x03. I hope it helps you out, too!
> 
> Shameless happy Theonsa. Everyone lives. Except thousands of random soldiers. Sorry, guys.

“You’re the last one, Lady Sansa,” Tyrion said, no lack of urgency in his voice. Sansa hesitated at the entrance before she took a step back and nodded to the guards. Despite his protests, the heavy doors fell down on Tyrion, and Sansa took a shaking breath as she looked at them.  _ There’s no going back now.  _

She bade two guards attend her and she stumbled around carts and men running to arms, the guards shoving men aside to keep her safe from their fumbling arrows, spears and swords. She felt deafened by the clanking of metal, the shouts of men, the scream of dragons; the world turned sideways in a blur of movement. And then a strange sound, of air crying aloud and blue, blue everywhere. The guard beside her screeched as he burned in his armor, the heat singing the ends of her hair. She cried out as she hit the ground, but righted herself clumsily, cursing long skirts.  _ This is why Arya never liked them! _

Dress in hand, she ran down the path toward the godswood, stopping to shelter under a cut out in the stones. Her heart was in her throat, her blood rushing in her veins, and Sansa tried desperately to remember how to breathe. Staring wide eyed, she saw how easily Winterfell burned, a frightening, eerily blue dragon the cause of it. She saw him riding atop it. The Night King. 

_ Bran… Theon… Hurry, Jon.  _

What had she been thinking? As the dragon passed overhead, she pressed against the wall, chastising her desperation for overtaking her thinking. She had no weapon. She had no skill. She could hear the dead.  _ I cannot just leave them to die this way. _

A sudden flash of white emerged from the smoke, red eyes meeting hers.  _ Ghost.  _ The direwolf stared intensely at her. She straightened and said,  _ “ _ Protect me in the godswood. _ ” _

Ghost turned and disappeared into the trees, Sansa rushing out behind him, watching the dragon fade away for another turn at the castle.  _ Where are they?  _

She stopped in her tracks, running into a soldier. She swallowed her scream and stepped back to speak with him when cold blood froze her stiff.  _ Blue eyes. Not like living. He has blue eyes! _

Sansa backed away from the man, a Stark soldier with half his side burned away. She breathed in her courage and shouted, “Get back!”

It made an otherworldly sound, one she could not describe. A snarl and snap later, she saw nothing but white fur staining red. Ghost. 

She hurried past the direwolf in time to see it. Theon had gotten between Bran and the melted ironborn. A flaming arrow struck the head of one man. A second arrow hit the next wight. When distance failed him, Theon threw down his bow and raised an axe from his belt. He hacked into the neck of the dead man, kicking it in the stomach.  _ He doesn’t see the other man. Why isn’t Bran moving, speaking?  _ He sat tilted to the side, head lolled uncomfortably far. 

The wight shambled behind Theon. Her feet took over before her reason had a moment to understand it. All she knew was that she was running. She screamed, “Look out!”

Theon turned to her instantly, eyes wide in shock before he realized the threat--his dragon glass axe removed the arm that reached for him. Another suddenly appeared and Sansa leapt without hesitation, crashing into Theon, knocking him to the ground with her force. She landed on top of him in a heap and he groaned, blinking up at her, confusion and something she could not name in his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear his head and said quickly, “Stay behind me.”

They righted themselves, covered by a sudden snow that lost everything around them. She could barely see his weary glance as he pressed her closer toward Bran, looking for the next enemy. The wights floated in the haze, two more but they stopped suddenly. Then  _ he _ appeared, the Night King himself, no emotion in his gaze, just emptiness. Death. The winds blew in harsh, blowing the snow away and chilling her to the bone. He was clear in the night, just across the way. 

Theon snatched his bow from the dirt and threw a wine pouch at the feet of the Night King. Sansa looked between the men, wondering what he was thinking. The man of ice gave pause, plucking the leather pouch from the ground. He held it before him, inspecting it. 

But Theon did not wait for him to drink or drop it. An arrow flew straight at the King, but he moved not, for the arrow hit the pouch itself, its contents leaking down his arm and spraying the Night King crown to toe in a pale looking ale. 

“Now,” Bran said, ravens flying from the unburned trees. Sansa stared at him.  _ He is awake.  _ The Night King’s head snapped skyward as Jon and Daenerys circled above, the dragons flying toward each other with the Night King in the center. Theon turned and pried Bran from his chair, sweeping his legs underneath one arm, holding him close. 

Theon looked at her silently, and Sansa began to ran further down the path into the wood. She felt the heat behind her, the fire of two dragons burning her heels and skirts, jumping as far as she could to the ground. Theon threw his leather cloak over her, smothering the flame. But not before she heard a horrifying scream, of monsters and men. The Night King glew bright green. 

“Wildfire,” Sansa gasped, her eyes in disbelief as the Night King burned. Moments later, Jon appeared from the flames, his Valyrian steel sword held high as he plunged it into the Night Knight’s chest. The world exploded into blue and then black. 

\---------

“ _ A sailor has gone to sea, _

_ Leaving his beloved behind. _

_ She’ll not see him again, you see _

_ For it’s the Drowned God he’ll find _

 

_ “She cried down to that God, she said _

_ I’ve born a life with an iron heart _

_ Let us take the night to wed _

_ Bless the babe, we’ll never part.” _

She woke to those gentle words, a voice that cracked in its whispered song, as if the singer were afraid to wake her with his words. A lullaby, though she had never heard it, she remembered the ones her mother would sing her at night when no other than Lady Catelyn could soothe her fears. It was lovely how his voice quavered, for she recognized the burden in that voice.  _ Theon? Did we die? Did the gods take us? _

“Sansa, you’re here in Winterfell. In your chambers,” Theon said softly, his voice hoarse and deep from the smoke. “I’m here with you.” 

_ Don’t stop singing, let me hear it again before I know the truth,  _ she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. But she was the Lady of Winterfell before anything else. “Tell me… tell me the truth.”

“The battle is won, Sansa. The dead are dead again or retreated,” Theon said with a sad smile. “Jon is alive. Arya. Daenerys, the rest they’re all alive. We lost good men. Thousands. Ser Brienne and Ser Jaime are gravely wounded, but that Sam Tarly won’t rest in his sick bed long enough not to help them.”

Sansa swallowed the stone in her throat. She asked, her voice betraying her fear, “What about Bran?”

Theon held her gaze for but a moment before he looked away. “I don’t know. When Jon slew the Night King, Bran’s eyes went white. He still sits that way in the godswood. No one can bring themselves to move him from the tree, for fear it will harm him… somehow. The Night King is frozen in place, Jon’s sword won’t budge from the ground. They’re waiting.”

She finally let herself breath before she shifted her feet. “Ow!”

“Careful, my lady, you wounded your feet and legs when the dragons lit the godswood. You gave us all a scare.”

She let the tears in her eyes fall, unafraid of how he sees her.  _ No one left alive has seen me the way Theon has. What do tears matter now? _

“Sansa,” he breathed, pulling her close. She clung to him, noting the coarse feel of bandages across his back just below his thin spun shirt. He smelled of clove and smoke, his fine hair tickling her arms. “Why didn’t you stay in the crypts?”

She shook her head, her fingers sliding into his hair, cradling the back of his head.  _ I don’t ever want to let go. I’m only safe like this. This moment. In the woods, freezing to death. Only with him.  _  “I couldn’t… I couldn’t let you die. Not without me there.” 

His gloved hand was lost in her hair and he rocked them both. “You saved my life. It wasn’t worth risking your own.”

Furious, she pushed away from him, shifting to sit as upright as she could. Sansa took his face in her hands, his beard rough against her skin, his blue green eyes filled with pain and gratitude and that something else again. “It is  _ my _ life to give. I will not sit by and wait for death again. If Arya can steal the faces of death, then I could steal you back from your stupid plan to make everything up to us with your life.”

He looked away. He always looked away, eventually. But now, he would look back. He nodded to her, a wordless understanding between them.

“You have to live, Theon. You  _ have  _ to.” She wanted to capture the memory of him, the sweat on his skin, the furrow in his brow, the way his eyes reminded her of salt spray and crashing waves. A heat pooled in her stomach, something she never thought she might feel again.  _ I thought Ramsay cut that out of me, too.  _

But this was different from her girlish dreams of Joffrey, before she met the monster. Before she met any of her monsters. No, this heat, this fire inside her, was true warmth. It was a hearth in the cold, not the burnings of the Red Woman.  _ Let me have this. I won’t even ask for more. Just once I want to know a man’s taste because I am hungry for him the way he is for me.  _

She pressed her lips against his, more chastely than she intended, somehow nervous even though they almost died together. He pulled back to protest, but she followed him and swallowed his words. He leaned in to her, understanding, accepting. The way he held her, with such tenderness in his kiss, she wanted to weep. But she parted her lips instead, opening to him and he opened to her. Sansa tasted lingering summer wine on his tongue as she explored him, craved him, held onto him so that the moment would not end. When she felt she would never breathe again, she parted. His lips were swollen from the kiss and she ran her thumb over them. He brought his forehead to her own. “My life is yours, Sansa. Do with it as you please.”

“No,” she said, capturing his eyes. She would not invite the ghosts from their graves again. “I want you at my side, not at my feet. Don’t give me your life. Share it with me.”

“I can’t give you what a highborn lady needs,” he replied, unmoving, in that new tone, the quiet, somber way he spoke these days. She opened her mouth to protest, but he started again. “But I will give you everything that I am, for as long as you want it.”

“Then sing for me, like mother would. Before I hear anything else. Before I hear of grain lost and burial plans and saving Bran, sing to me. Let me be a girl again for just a moment. Did your mother sing this to you, once?”

He shifted in his seat, taking her hands in his and he looked up at her with such conviction she could not move. “Yes, she would sing it to me after my brothers beat me. It’s childish… but when I cannot sleep, I think of it. I think of her.” 

For a moment, she thinks,  _ This is the first I’ve ever asked him, of his other family, of his island home.  _ He was not the arrogant, smiling ward from her youth. He was not the cowering creature Ramsay made. He was something else. He was her scarred, sometimes stupid, and so earnest prince, at last.  _ I love him _ , she thought, fleetingly, dismissing it as soon as it came. When they lived through this, she might think it again. But now, she only wanted his words, his company. Theon’s smile was soft and he quietly sang: 

_ The Drowned God thought and so he spared _

_ The sailor who had never died-- _

_ For the hell he gave his watery guard _

_ Was too much for what was tried. _

 

_ ‘I have cried an ocean for you to sail _

_ A growing boy to learn your face _

_ What rises stronger cannot fail _

_ And at your side will be my place.’ _


End file.
